LTE / 4G standard / Narrowband IoT | Use Cases | Solutions

The fourth generation of mobile phone standards LTE (Long Term Evolution), developed by the 3GPP ( 3rd Generation Partnership Project), offers an up to seven times faster upload speed with upload speeds of up to 50mbps. Retrofitting the infrastructure of UMTS (3G) to LTE-Advanced (4G) will not be a hurdle, as the basic scheme of UMTS persists. In addition to the higher capacity, the benefits of 4G LTE are the significantly lower latency times. These play a key role in the smooth retrieval of IoT applications that rely on real-time information, such as data from production systems or traffic information.

Currently, 5G is being developed and said to be ready for launching in 2020.
The rate of transmission is supposed to be 10 times the rate of LTE speed and will enhance connectivity between machines and devices.

Another advantage of LTE: Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT). This is a new mobile network, which is based on the LTE standard and is used exclusively for IoT applications. Compared to mobile networks (2G, 3G and 4G), NB-IoT offers energy-saving capabilities that increase the battery life of simple IoT applications up to 10 years.

This technology is used for communicating with "things", which transfer only small amounts of data over long periods of time and are located in hard-to-reach places.
The LTE Narrowband technologies Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 already provide alternatives to the 2G standard, which has already been shut down in some countries.

Benefits of LTE

Benefits-of-LTE

Technical Summary

	LTE	LTE Cat M1	NB IoT
3GPP Release	Release 12	Release 13	Release 13
Downlink	1 Mbps	< 1Mbps	170 kbps
Uplink	1 Mbps	< 1 Mbps	250 kbps
Bandwidth	20 MHz	1.4 MHz	180 kHz
Transmitting Power	23 dBm	23 or 20 dBm	23 dBm